Ursa Major Consulting created its Housing Resource Guide website. The Resource Guide incorporates a database on apartment complexes, housing resources and programs, and provides videos and webinars as part of a toolkit to help individuals move to independent housing.

The site was created using Joomla! and associated components. New housing resources and programs can be submitted for approval by members of the public and administered by the NoVA RIT.

The Law Offices of Mitchell Garabedian

The Law Offices of Mitchell Garabedian, a law firm specializing in sexual abuse cases, required a website that was responsive to quickly post breaking news of new settlements and media coverage. It was difficult to make changes to their previous site.

We redeployed the website and added new capabilities, including embedded video and transcripts of press conferences, and improvements to search engine optimization (SEO).

We continue to support the Law Offices of Mitchell Garabedian with site updates and improvements.

Ursa Major supported the high-traffic, high-content site in Joomla! for several years before its recent transition to integrate with a membership management soution.

JMA Solutions

JMA Solutions, an award-winning government contractor, wanted a site that highlighted their corporate capabilities and awards, advertised their job openings, and provided internal forms and documents for employees.

Ursa Major provided quick turn-around on a conversion from the old website, trained the internal site administrators, and later upgraded the site.

More recently, Ursa Major led an internal Website Refresh group at JMA Solutions to refresh the site and provide a feature on the front page for current announcements.

Talltree South Condominium Association

Talltree South, an award-winning condo community association, provides its owners and tenants handbook, including rules and regulations,in searchable form via its website. Newsletters, e-mail and e-mail-to-text notices, and a window to its Google calendar are also provided to enhance communication with owners and tenants.

Ursa Major constructed the site in Joomla! 1.5 and later upgraded it to 2.5 and then 3.x. The content-rich site is very functional. Plans are to update its look in the coming year.

Delta Consulting Group

Delta Consulting Group, an international consulting firm, needed a new website that featured its professionals.

The site incorporated the ability for Guild staff and other site users to manage a calendar and event registration, upload photos to the rotator, and maintain a directory of tour company affiliate members. The public can request tour guides, who maintain their profiles including specialties and languages spoken.

On May 11th, Becky Roberts and I will present "Tweet Jams: Facilitated Social Media or Chaos?" at the International Association of Facilitators North America (IAFNA) Conference 2012, in Halifax, Nova Scotia!

We will explore how to apply the concepts of facilitation to Twitter, as we teach how to facilitate a Tweet Jam / Tweet Chat, from 9:00 to 10:30 Atlantic Time.

Join us using the hashtag #IAFNAjam, or join our non-conference facilitation discussions using #facilichat. We will be tweeting out more information shortly.

The in-person session will be live tweeted and will introduce Twitter, tweetchats/tweetjams and tools, and will evolve to a Tweet Chat / Tweetjam that will discuss facilitation of Tweet Chats / Tweetjams.

The main questions will include:

What types of tweetjams / tweetchats have you participated in or facilitated?

When is a Tweetjam or Tweetchat a great technique in your facilitation practice?

What tools and techniques work well for tweetjam facilitation?

What works well to record and present tweetjam results?

The results of the tweetjam will be posted and made available to participants.

All are welcome to participate via Twitter in addition to those participating at the conference. For more information, follow @dbfirsching and @beckylroberts!

After trying out a variety of tools, my finger seems to gravitate to HootSuite on my Droid. Its interface is just simple and clean. I can flip between my home feed, lists, etc., and easily use it to post, retweet, and so on. It works well as a web app on the desktop, too!

That said, I've not explored the Pro version or spent any money. For what I do, the free version seems to be sufficient.

What People Say

Business Process Analysis

“I"ve worked with Dorothy on a variety of projects in which her ability to conduct in-depth, detailed analysis allowed us to place strong confidence in the reliability of work results. She quickly gained in-depth knowledge of complex business processes, IT systems, and strategic objectives to provide analysis and recommendations. Excellent work results, on-time with quality products were always a given with Dorothy on-board.”

-- Sheryl Kennerly, CIO, Committee for Purchase From People Who Are Blind or Severely Disabled (now the AbilityOne Program)